Page 68 of The Tsarina's Favorite
I didn’t tell her, but I really liked this too.
XXII.
With the removal ofthe jesses, I could walk a natural gait for the first time since the beginning of my captivity.The only distance I needed to walk, however, consisted of five steps into my new inside accommodation, those rendered unnecessary by a forceful shove from one of the guards.Unbound though I was, the cage door then swung shut behind me and the lock engaged.
For a pair of parrots, the cage might have sufficed.Although sizable enough for anything smaller, the bars were too widely spaced.For anything larger — a person, for example, even if that person looked like a bird — it offered no space at all.I couldn’t lie down without feet and legs sticking out.I couldn’t stretch my wings.Sitting, my tail feathers butted up against the bars.And, to make my exposure worse, the cage took a place of prominence in the middle of a public foyer.I couldn’t even keep a wall at my back.
I resumed being the most boring creature in the tsarina’s menagerie, curling up and sleeping, or pretending to sleep, most of the time.Even when people paused by the bars, no one remained for long.Even the offhand insult failed to reach me nowadays, desensitized as I had become to the casual abuse.
When Alaina visited me that first night, I asked her if she could tie the chain up as she had at our picnic.The task was a little more complicated through the bars, but she accomplished it skillfully, even taking a blue ribbon from her hair to secure it so that it would not come loose.
“I can probably get the bands off too,” she said, taking one of my hands and looking at the ties on the wrist guard.
“Maybe you could just knot up the laces?”
The bows she made were too pretty to be of my doing, but effective, so I did not say anything but thank you.
“I’m sorry I cannot visit during the day now,” she said.
All four hours of day that we had left at this time of year.
“Evening visits will suffice,” I assured her.
“Can I do anything else?”
“A blanket?”
“Only if you promise that you won’t hurt yourself with it.”
“I will be much less likely to harm myself if I’m not cold all the time.”
“Then that is easily accomplished.Is there—”
Voices came from down the hall, and she froze like a child caught stealing a sweet.
“Should I run?”she asked.
